The Jews and the World in the Fourth Gospel
Parallelism, Function, and Context
by Lars Kierspel
In our post-Holocaust context, the Gospel of John has aroused the suspicion of being a Christian text with an anti-Jewish message. Statements such as the Jews were persecuting Jesus, the Jews were grumbling about him, or the Jews said to Jesus, ‘You have a demon’ are seen as vicious generalizations that wrongly blame a whole nation. New translations of the Gospel respond to these charges and either omit the term or limit its reference to ‘Judeans’ or ‘Jewish leaders’. Lars Kierspel shows that the Gospel’s narrative focus lies not on the Jews, mostly used by the narrator, but on the parallel term the world which is mostly used by Jesus, the main protagonist. Statements such as the world a hates me (Jesus), the world hates you (the disciples), and the world has hated them (the disciples) reflect a conflict of the early church with an opponent that cannot be limited to the synagogue. The Jews emerge as part of a theodicy which does not stigmatize one particular race but situates the opposition of the historical master Jesus in a post-Easter context of his servants who experience hate and persecution in the larger Greco-Roman world.
- By (author) Lars Kierspel
Other Titles in this Series
Paul’s Ekklesia as a Civic Assembly
Understanding the People of God in their Politico-Social World
Volume 393
The Shema and The First Commandment in First Corinthians
An Intertextual Approach to Paul's Re-reading of Deuteronomy
Volume 253
Psalmenrezeption in der Passionsgeschichte des Matthausevangeliums
Eine intertextuelle Studie zur Verwendung, theologischen Relevanz und strukturgebenden Funktion der Psalmen in Mt 26-27 im Lichte fruhjudischer Psalmenrekurse
Volume 571
Hohe Messianologie
Ubermenschliche Aspekte eschatologischer Heilsgestalten im Fruhjudentum
Volume 523
Isaiah’s Servants in Early Judaism and Christianity
The Isaian Servant and the Exegetical Formation of Community Identity
Evangelienexegese als Partiturlesen
Eine Interpretation von Mk 1,1-8,22a zwischen Komposition und Performanz
Volume 490
The Gospel as the Revelation of God’s Righteousness
Paul's Use of Isaiah in Romans 1:1-3:26
Volume 428
The Gospel of Peter and Early Christian Apologetics
Rewriting the Story of Jesus' Death, Burial, and Resurrection
Volume 301
Abraham’s Faith in Romans 4
Paul's Concept of Faith in Light of the History of Reception of Genesis 15:6
The Baptismal Episode as Trinitarian Narrative
Proto-Trinitarian Structures in Mark's Conception of God
Volume 535
Veranderte Endzeitvorstellungen
Die Rezeption der Offenbarung des Johannes beim ersten christlich-lateinischen Dichter Commodian
Volume 504
The Use of Scripture in the Apocryphon of John
A Diachronic Analysis of the Variant Versions
Volume 441
Similar Books
Athanasius of Alexandria, Epistula ad episcopos Aegypti et Libyae
Old Slavonic Version and English Translation
Volume 261
Cyril of Alexandria’s Christological Exegesis
Explorations of Partitive Exegesis in the Dialogues on the Trinity
Volume 70
Epiphanies of the Divine in the Septuagint and the New Testament
Fifth International Symposium of the Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti (CJHNT), 14-17 May 2015, Nottingham
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
From Joseph to Jesus
The Joseph Narrative as a Compositional Template from Old Greek Esther to the Gospel of Luke
Volume 125
Paradise Lost in Transmission
The Return to Eden in the Apocalypse of Peter within Its Ethiopic and Early Christian Contexts
Punning in Odd or Elegant Constructions in Jeremiah
The Convergence of Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Textuality in the Hebrew Text of Jeremiah
Shame in the Worlds of the Hebrew Bible and Akkadian Texts
A Linguistic Study and Its Implications
Volume 33
Tabernacle, Table, Ark, and Text
Richard of Saint Victor on the Interpretation of Scripture
Volume 67
The Anglo-Norman Bible’s Books of Kings, a Critical Edition
(BL Royal 1 C III, fols 234r-274v)
Volume 37
The Biblical Tale of Judah and Tamar in Fourteenth-Century Iran
A Judeo-Persian Versified Account by Shāhīn with Scholarly Edition, Annotated Translation and Persian Transliteration
Volume 94, 951
The Body
Lived, Cultured, Adorned: Essays on Dress and the Body in the Bible and Ancient Near East in Honor of Nili S. Fox
The Compositional History of the Book of Kings
An Analysis of the Evaluative Frameworks in 1 Kings 14–2 Kings 25
The Discourse of Rites
Shaping and Reshaping the (Counter-)Priestly Rituals Conducted Outside the Tabernacle
